Russian TV sparks outrage with Ukraine child 'crucifixion' claim

Local residents pushing a pram walk past an Ukrainian tank in the eastern Ukrainian city of Slavyansk on July 8, 2014

MOSCOW - Russian state television has provoked a storm of criticism after it aired an uncorroborated report claiming the Ukrainian army publicly nailed a three-year-old boy to a board in a former rebel stronghold.

Kiev on Monday accused Russia of ratcheting up its propaganda war by airing an interview in which a woman gave graphic details of the alleged crucifixion in the flashpoint city of Slavyansk, which neither AFP nor other media have been able to confirm.

Channel One TV broadcast footage of a woman who said she saw Ukrainian soldiers round up people in central Slavyansk, which the army retook this month after three months of clashes with separatists, and nail an insurgent's child to a notice board.

A spokeswoman for Ukraine's interior ministry, Natalya Stativko, slammed the report as "following in the footsteps of Goebbels," Nazi Germany's minister of propaganda.

"The cruder and the more monstrous the lie, the better it will look for the Russian propaganda machine," Stativko told AFP.

Throughout the crisis both Russia and Ukraine have accused each other of "fascist" tendencies.

Russian official rhetoric has often compared events in Ukraine to the darkest crimes of Nazi Germany and called authorities in Kiev a "fascist junta".

But the Channel One report appears to represent a new low in Russia's media war against the ex-Soviet country, which signed an association agreement with the EU last month, analysts said.